Multiplying impact with unique perspectives with Damaune Journey, Global Chief Growth Officer @ 72andSunny

0:04Hello, everyone. Welcome to Question Everything, a podcast all about learning from the successes and the failures of those who dared to, well, question everything. This podcast is part interview, part therapy, and part Price is Right. We have our own game board stacked with questions that'll make even the most successful CMO sweat. I'm your host, Ashley Walter, CMO and partner at curiosity. On today's episode, I sit down with Damian Journey, global chief growth officer at 72 and Sunny, a creative agency known for using optimism to shape culture. Between stories about Sport Beach in Cannes and shooting an NFL spot in Ghana, you'll learn Damian's secret formula for multiplying campaign impact, the wholesome metric 72 and Sunny uses to evaluate creative, and why the best way to tear down walls between departments is by building one.

0:56So grab your shades and turn up the volume because this episode will leave you optimistic about the industry.

1:07Damian Journey is the Global Chief Growth Officer at 72 & Sunny, where he oversees global revenue operations including marketing, business development, and corporate communications. Under his leadership, the agency has established over 50 new client partnerships, including CarMax, Cadillac, and United Airlines. And they've earned major industry honors, including Ad Age A-List, and most recently, an Emmy. Whether it's walking Sport Beach, supporting Ad Council, or being the subject of a Harvard business case study, one thing is clear. When it comes to winning, no one does it like Journey. Welcome to the podcast, Damian.

1:46Damaune Journey:Thank you. Jeez, I was like, who is she talking about? This guy seems pretty awesome. I was shocked to know that it was me. You're the best. Thank you. You all dug into the files. Like, AI gave you a lot of information I didn't know you would have. Well, we do a lot of human research, too, believe it or not. It's not all AI up here. So it was really fun digging into your journey, though, because, man, you've been out there. You've been, like, everywhere. I feel like you were just in Cannes. You're doing all this work with the NFL. I met you for the first time at the Adage A-List Creativity Jury Judging the People Awards.

2:22Damaune Journey:Yes, exactly. And we were at that table with all the other jurors and we were discussing our processes and the people who came out on top and all those that were deserving but may not have in that moment. It was awesome. You ran a great jury, I've got to say. Was there anything surprising coming out of that experience for you or even the caliber of people that entered this year? Yeah, I thought it was a really, really amazing slate of candidates. And to get from a really large group of cool people to a very small subset of ultimate winners was challenging. But the part I loved the most was the jury, the jurors, you and your peers.

3:07Damaune Journey:you can't make it so much so easy and fun that it didn't feel like we were there was no battles there was no backroom drama it felt like we coalesced around the right people relatively easily but we're willing to debate if need be to get to the right choice so thank you miss Ashley for doing all the work it was it was a showload of work there were so many entries I was shocked I'm like, that was a lot, a lot to get through, but it was so inspiring. Like, I like on the side, I'm taking notes like, oh, my gosh, the accomplishments many of these people have had. Exactly. Wow. You almost feel bad at times picking one because there was others who were so deserving.

3:48And I remember we made a choice.

3:50Damaune Journey:I won't list any names, but we made a choice about someone instead of someone else. and I thought it was a really courageous decision on our part. And when it was announced, the room, it was like an audible gasp. And I think people were like, yeah, this person is deserving too. Like it was an opportunity for us to give other people a shot at winning some of these awards because there's so many great people in the industry that are deserving. It's good when we can spread the love a little bit. I'm proud of us for doing that. So true. I am too. It makes you proud to be in this industry. when you see the humanity and the accomplishment, the personal accomplishment behind it.

4:27Damaune Journey:For sure. I mean, there was people crying at the point of receiving the awards. And that was really touching. It's good to know that we can do something that matters to the humans because they put in so much work and it's often not recognized. Personal. It is personal. All right, my friends. So you know how this podcast works. I have a game board stacked with 12 super spicy questions for you. You have no idea what they are. You don't know. Yeah, no idea. Oh boy. No idea. I'm on the edge of my virtual seat. Ah, well, we've got some good ones here. So we'll pull up the game board and the power is in your hands.

5:05You get to pick the first number and we'll see what's behind it.

5:09Damaune Journey:Okay, I'm going to go for number two. All right, let's see. Number two. Okay, so explain this formula for me. We've got purpose times perspective times persistence equals impact. What does this look like for you in practice? And is there a campaign that 72 and Sunny has done where you feel like this has really proved out to be true? Your research team is freaking phenomenal. I just want to say like hats off to you all for pulling this up. So that formula is one that has been kind of a personal impact formula for me that I've tried to live by. So let's start with purpose. Like it's important to have a purpose and to understand what that is.

5:54Damaune Journey:Let me back up before I get there. I'm an engineer by trade. And what I learned very quickly in engineering, and this is a simple math problem, is 10 plus 10 plus 10 is 30. But 10 times 10 times 10 is a thousand. And so when you multiply things, there is a multiplicative effect, sort of an exponential effect. And I think that with impact, it's kind of the same way. If you can take the right variables and kind of multiply them, you can have an outsized impact on an environment or a space. And so for me, as I started thinking about the things I've done in my life and specifically what I try to do in advertising, impact is one of those.

6:31Damaune Journey:So the way I get there is define my purpose and be very, very clear about that. And if I can multiply that by some perspective, in my particular case, I'm not from advertising. I've been here less than five years. So my view of the world of what we do and why we do it is different. I'm a black man from Flint, Michigan. That perspective is not often represented in advertising. So I can apply that to the work that we do. I'm a dad. I live in California. That's a different perspective than many other people that I work with. And so I can apply that. So when you can apply a different perspective to a problem and you have a purpose that is clear in your mind, if you can then apply the third piece, which is persistence, you, I think, can provide and deliver a tremendous impact.

7:17Damaune Journey:So that's the impact formula that I've tried to live by and bring to bear on my time here in our great industry. And I think, frankly, there's nothing magical that only I can do. It's not proprietary. I think all of us can apply those same elements to the work we do and really generate outsized results. So that's the impact formula, hopefully broken down into its component parts. That's great. That's great. Yeah. Now, is there any work that like when you think about that formula that comes to mind where you actually saw it in action? Yeah, you mentioned it off the top that we do at 72 and Sunny, we work with the National Football League and have for a while.

8:01Damaune Journey:And because of their platform, both with the Super Bowl and just their general media footprint in the world, I think something like 92 of 100 most watched shows in the course of a year are football games. So we have a decided advantage by the scale of the thing. But when we deliver messages to the world, the world kind of pays attention. And so we've been able to apply this same approach in the last three Super Bowls, I would say, as we talked about increasing opportunities for women to play the sport of football. In 2023, we won an Emmy for a campaign called Run With It. And that was about a young Mexican girl playing flag football, no one could grab her flags.

8:46Damaune Journey:And it ended with an ode to the women who are moving the game forward. That helped us get the L.A. 28 Olympics to include flag football as an official sport for the first time ever. That's going to revolutionize opportunities for not just female athletes, but also even pro football players will now have a chance to be Olympians, which didn't exist before that. In 24, we took that same approach and said, well, the NFL is looking to expand internationally. Can't we find a way to make that really sticky for people? So we packed up our production machine, dropped them in Ghana, West Africa, in Accra at a public market, and had a young African kid playing football in an actual public market in the center of Ghana in a way that allowed NFL players to come over there and learn about the culture.

9:38Damaune Journey:We had an African production team. First time they'd ever get a chance to do a production of that scale with that sort of attention. And I think it changed a lot of lives in so far as the African diaspora being shown at the Super Bowl in a two minute film sponsored by the NFL. And then last year, we went back to women playing flag football with a spot called Flag 50. And there was arguably the greatest flag football player today, a young woman in high school, Kilolo, the first woman ever to receive a college scholarship playing flag football, was the center of a spot around flag football. And the objective of that one is to turn flag football into a sport at the varsity level throughout the United States.

10:25Damaune Journey:And I think now we're at something like 20, 25 states have sanctioned it as a sport. And the number is growing, which is providing more opportunities for women to play flag football. And so the reason I bring this up is because each one of those speaks to a specific purpose, having a unique perspective, and then being persistent. because even though those events might have occurred on an annual basis, it took a boatload of persistence to get any one of those across the finish line and ultimately to have the impact we were trying to have. So maybe that's an example of the impact formula in real time.

11:05Nailed it. I mean, incredible example. And I love that the way you're thinking about impact is in these like micro moments too. Like you mentioned the people behind the camera and the directors that you brought on to work on the project. Like you're really thinking about impact along that entire creative supply chain. So kudos to you guys.

11:25Damaune Journey:It's funny you mentioned this. One of the things that's important to us at 72 and Sunny is that we want to expand and diversify the creative class. And that's not just the people like me who sit in the rooms, although that's important. but we want the people that are in front of the camera and the people behind the camera to have opportunities to diversify the landscape and to represent the world that we know is true in front of us. And you can't do that if they're not in the room. So take every chance we can. That's right. Great. All right. Let's go back to the board. Oh, here we go. Here we go.

12:01Damaune Journey:I'm going to go for number four. I'm keeping with an even number strategy for so far. I love seeing everybody's strategy. All right. So, I mean, kind of related. So, um, how, when you're vetting work, when, when you're getting the storyboards or the ideas are coming across your desk, how do you measure whether that work is great? Do you have like an internal litmus test, uh, that says, you know what, this is, you know, we're going to win the awards here. We're going to get the headlines here. Yeah. Uh, great question. So first of all, I'll say, we don't work for awards awards are very nice uh we appreciate them it's a validator and of sorts but we work for clients we work to advance their business and um to help our clients our um our talent actually do work that's meaningful to them awards are byproduct if you've done that job well so um they're important but they have a place and it's not you wouldn't walk in any of our offices and see any of our awards on shelves.

13:05Damaune Journey:In fact, my Emmy on my shelf is because I'm an egotistical maniac and I want to have an Emmy on my shelf. And it's an Emmy. I mean, come on. But so there's that. But as far as work goes, for us, we want to make work that actually makes a difference, that moves people and that moves commerce and has an impact on culture. And so when we look at work that's coming out, like there's times where you have to actually do things that are transactional, that specifically benefits the brand's clear objective, which is number one, is like, what is the brand's objective? And that work may not always be the fanciest or the buzziest or the award winning work, but it moves the needle for the client and damn it, that's success.

13:48Damaune Journey:So that counts as good work. But the other part that counts, because we're really competitive people. So we keep score, we play to win, and that counts as good work. But on the other dimension, does the work that we do move culture? Does it make a difference in the world? So I mentioned these three NFL examples. Those were all cool. Two of them won Emmys. So yeah, you could say they were award winning, but all three of them fundamentally moved culture forward in a way. There's more opportunities now for women. There's more opportunity for flag football, for professional athletes to play flag football.

14:25Damaune Journey:There's more young men and women around the world who think of themselves as potential football players because of the born to play spot in Africa. Those are examples of work that worked. And I think for us, that's the ultimate measure. Did it work? Yeah. Does that help? Yeah, I think that's great. You know, I think a lot of agencies, I imagine, I believe this to be true, look up to you guys. And you're one of the best, I think, in the world. And sometimes it can look easy, right? Just banger after banger after banger after banger. And so it's good to kind of get in your head, like, what are you looking for?

15:02And when do you just feel it in your gut, like that's going to work? And so, yeah, I think that's good.

15:07Damaune Journey:Here's a simple other thing that we, our chief creative officer, our global chief creative officer is a man named Matt Murphy. He's freaking brilliant. And he comes from a long line of brilliant creative leaders. Our founders, Matt and John, John and Glenn, are both creative geniuses. And oftentimes I think about and we use what we call the Murph meter. Like, will this meet Murph's standards? And similarly, would Matt Jarvis, one of our early founder partners, and John Boiler and Glenn Cole, will they want to show this work or talk about this work at a dinner party or a cocktail party? If they wouldn't pull up their phone and say, look at this, or we did that, then maybe it's not meeting the standard.

15:54Damaune Journey:And that's served us well over the last years. I like that. All right. Jeff Worman, he's our chief creative officer. if he won't show it at a dinner party. Back to the drawing board. Back to the drawing board. I love it. All right. Speaking of, let's go back to the board. The board. Where are you going next? Okay. See, I'm going to throw you all the way off. I'm going to go to 12. All the way to the end. Let's go, 12. All right. So you said this to me at A-List. Actually, it was on one of our jury calls. And actually, you didn't say it to just me. You said it to everybody. But I actually wrote it down.

16:31And you said, if you want to make it in the big leagues, film can only be part of your story. So I'd love to hear your perspective. Talk about how like this old school TV first mindset has evolved and why you believe it's important to think beyond the spot.

16:49Damaune Journey:Oh, what a wonderful question. We have the benefit of living in a time where the mediums that we use to consume information has changed dramatically. I mean, you know, just looking at you, you're clearly someone who's not past the age of 30. So you would know this. But before you were born, back in the dark ages, TV was in black and white. And there was before that, there was radio. And we're now at a place where linear TV is really struggling. I think sports is kind of the thing that keeps it alive. And even that's moving to streaming. And beyond streaming, you have all these other platforms.

17:28Damaune Journey:And so it's not enough to be the best big 30, 60 second spot maker. You have to be able to make things that people can consume in the way they're consuming information today. I have my buddies. My buddy was here with his son is going off to college. 17, 18 year old kid starting college in the fall. He was with us for four days and he watched my huge 65 inch television screen about two minutes in four days. He was on this for like a thousand hours in that period of time. And so if you can't make something that catches someone's attention on a small device or on an app, then you're going to find yourself going the way of the dinosaur.

18:11And so for us, it's about how do you capture someone's attention and deliver emotion and a message that can move them wherever they might be.

18:22Damaune Journey:For some people, that might be radio. For some people, that's a beautiful out of home. for others, it's something on their small screen that actually can capture their attention. And so I think it's incumbent upon us as marketers to be nimble enough to deliver information where people can consume it. The old adage says fish where the fish are. You're not doing very good if you're a great fisherman, but there's no fish in that space. Go to where the fish are. Yeah, that's really great advice. When you guys are concepting, do you start with the spot or no? Like we don't even need to see the 30-second script or the 15-second script.

18:59Yeah, for us, it's about the idea and what the brand plans to do.

19:06Damaune Journey:So we really, really like to know if we can what their media buy is or how they're planning to deploy media. If we understand that, then we can begin the concept specifically to that objective. If the brand doesn't yet have that or we don't have access to that information, we tend to show it in a variety of forms so they can imagine where this can live and how it can live across platforms um there's something great about a script a manifesto and a script it gives people clarity and something that people still connect to in the room but that does not mean it will always show up that way in the final uh deliverable um i can think of a time we did this work with Tinder, where it was not a commercial spot at all.

19:53Damaune Journey:We basically took the app and turned it into a choose-your-own-adventure movie that you would tune into every Sunday night. And by swiping left or right, you would decide whether you would save the puppy or whether you wouldn't. And people would make these decisions over the course of this window of time, and they would then be matched based on their choices. That was an amazingly successful activation, if you will, for that brand. There was not a TV spot associated with it, but it played perfectly to the audience they wanted to reach and their core audience, and it delivered for them. So it was a movie on an app, which is very different than a television spot on a screen.

20:36Brilliant. I love that. All right, let's go back to the board.

20:39Damaune Journey:Back to the board. Oh, now you're really messing me up because I've got to like, I picked my easy ones. I like nine. Okay, let's go nine. All right. So I want to talk about your daughter for a second. And I know your kids have both been an inspiration, but specifically, let's talk about your little girl. I know that she was part of the inspiration for you joining this amazing advertising industry. and I also know that today you're a passionate advocate for authentic representation. We've already talked a little bit about, you know, women in sports. You're also a member of See Her, which we are a member of See Her as well, so we share that passion.

21:21I would love to know, has there been a moment in your career where you've sat and thought, you know what, my daughter would be really proud of this work I'm doing?

21:32Damaune Journey:Well, you know, what a wonderful thing to bring up. So this is my daughter. This is Kennedy and she makes me happy. There's moments that we probably don't get along, but I love her dearly. And so much of what I do, I think about through her lens. I grew up with a brother. I didn't understand women. I'm not sure how I even got married. So she's like opened up a valve in my life that I didn't know existed. And so, So much of my choice, as you point out, to join advertising was in watching her during the pandemic. We were trying to, we're in this time, if you recall. The pandemic was locking us all in our homes.

22:15Damaune Journey:George Floyd had just been murdered. And I've got this, I don't know, five-year-old daughter who's stuck at home watching media. And so I could choose what shows she watched that had representation that met my needs and standards. But I couldn't choose what advertisements she saw. those would appear without discretion. And so as I became more aware of our industry in 71 Sunny, I was like, I could spend some time in my life helping to shape those images and messages because they matter no less than the images on a TV show or a cartoon. So she was largely the inspiration behind the move. And so I'll tell you, there were two moments that really stuck out of my mind is points of pride.